"I went to his office," recalls Derrick Hebert, "To his personal office... put me in a chair, An hour, two hours later, I came out, walked out his office, throw out my pack of cigarettes into a trash can he has, never smoked again."Comedian and stage hypnotist turned hypno–therapist Rob Rue says through hypnosis the key may be found to releasing bad habits."People right now wanna quit smoking, they wanna lose weight," says Rue. "We've helped people with alcohol cessation."Law enforcement agencies, hospitals and counselors have helped mainstream hypnosis in the past decade."It's not a back room boggadie–boggadie type of thing. Most people with their coffee or after a meal, they want a cigarette, it's an expectation. What hypnosis does is it breaks those triggers and diminishes them."Rue calls it a safe therapeutic alternative to diet pills, anti–smoking medications.He says unlike these types of aids hypnosis comes with only one warning label."Hypnosis will not help you do anything if you don't want it to. Hypnosis is not mind control."Hebert agrees."You have to want to quit. You can't have the physical you have to want it to work"Rue says he has about a seventy percent success rate and says the cost of simply taking chance with hypnosis can far outweigh the costs of smoking in just one year."If you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and you spend five dollars a pack, you are spending 1825 dollars a year. You are paying someone to kill you."Hebert says that was good enough for him and has remained smoke–free for seven years.

Amy Lavieri's New Year's resolution for 2013 was to finally lose the extra weight she'd been carrying for a decade.She'd repeatedly failed at diets and gym memberships, so the Watertown, Mass., resident resolved to give hypnotism a try. One year and a dozen-or-so hypnotherapy sessions later, she's 50 pounds lighter."If I look back to last year at this point to where I am this year, it's been a complete 180," she says.Hypnotism has been around since the mid-19th century, when it was often used as a parlor trick. Today, hypnotherapy is commonly used to break unhealthy habits like smoking, to rid people of phobias and to treat panic attacks.Anecdotal success stories like Lavieri's abound, and studies have found it effective for behavioral change, as well as for reducing surgical and cancer pain, nausea and fatigue in conjunction with other treatments. Data is weaker for quitting smoking, with one 2010 study finding that hypnotherapy did not do a better job of helping people quit than other interventions or no treatment at all."It's something that's often worth trying to find, is it a little bit effective for me, or is it a lot effective, or not at all," says Guy Montgomery, director of Integrative Behavioral Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.Unlike the stereotype from old movies, hypnotherapy does not put people to sleep and old pocket watches are not involved. Instead, the client, with closed eyes, is guided through a series of relaxing imagery and ideas.Can hypnosis help you stick to your resolutions to get healthier? Maybe, but it's not magic.(Photo: Todd Plitt USA TODAY)Everyone responds slightly differently to hypnosis, with some slipping into a deep, sleep-like trance and others not feeling much different than having their eyes closed."How often during the day do we zone out or drift off? That's a light trance state," says Tom Nicoli, a consulting hypnotherapist and trainer in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, who helped launch World Hypnotism Day a decade ago.Hypnotherapists use this state to give clients suggestions, like "resist the urge to smoke," or to take them back to past experiences, such as the first time they were scared by a spider.Benjamin Kligler, research director of the Beth Israel Department of Integrative Medicine Continuum Center for Health and Healing in New York City, used self-hypnosis to quit smoking himself and now treats others.A primary care doctor who uses mind-body techniques, nutrition and lifestyle modifications in addition to hypnotherapy, Kliger estimates that in 3-6 sessions he helps 60%-70% of the people who come to him for smoking cessation. But he won't treat someone unless he's convinced they really want to quit.Most of what he does, he says, is train his patients to treat themselves."Self-hypnosis is the really key part, because you get to a point where you're going to have that craving – you just have to be able to give yourself the message: 'It's no longer an option.'"Insurance almost never covers hypnosis, so clients must pay out of pocket for fees that range as high as Kliger's $250 a session – for as few as three sessions or more than a dozen, depending on the complexity of the problem.Brian Mahoney, Lavieri's hypnotherapist, says he will only work with people who understand that hypnotism is not magic. He doesn't work miracles in one session; success comes, as with Lavieri, after weeks or months of hard work.Lavieri, who met with Mahoney twice a month for the first half of 2013 and less often since, says she was very skeptical about hypnotism at first. "I did initially call with the sense of 'why not, I've tried everything else?'" But she got more comfortable when she realized that she felt very focused when hypnotized and always knew what was going on around her."I found it extremely successful in understanding a lot that maybe I had slipped under the rug for many years," she says.Lavieri's resolution for 2014? To use hypnotism to help keep off the weight."This is the first time in a long time I'm optimistic I can maintain this and not have weight issues any more," she says.Finding a good hypnotist:There is no national licensing board for hypnotherapists. Some practitioners are doctors or psychologists with extra training and the skills to use hypnotherapy in conjunction with other treatments; others have no more professional training than a weekend seminar.To decide if a hypnotherapist is right for you:* Do some Internet research, seeing how they present themselves online and checking review sites like Yelp (though remember that not all reviews are legitimate).* Get personal references from people you trust.* Talk to the hypnotherapist on the phone before scheduling a session, to see how they come across, and to ask about training and experience.Avoid people who promise quick fixes or miracles.

TAMPA, Fla. - Rena Greenberg is putting Barbara Cox, who's struggling with a lifelong battle with obesity, under hypnosis. “I had a traumatic loss," she said. "I lost my husband at a younger age and I just over-ate to compensate for my loss," Cox said.Greenberg, a hypnotherapist and author, planted different thoughts into Barbara’s subconscious, helping her, Cox says, to shed pounds she's never been able to lose before. So why the tears? "Happiness, joy. Seeing myself some place I never thought I'd see myself before," she said.Dermatologist Philip Shenefelt uses hypnosis to help patients alleviate pain and anxiety and better control skin disorders. One of his patients had intense pain from shingles. “I taught himself hypnosis and he came back a couple of weeks later and he said that his life was totally changed. He said he still had the pain, but now he could turn the pain down," Shenefelt said.Dr. Shenefelt believes hypnosis works by affecting certain parts of the brain. “There's scientific evidence that the part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex, it's sort of in the middle of the brain, is associated with regulating emotion. That part, if altered in terms of blood flow, helps to suppress the sensation of the pain. The nerves may still be sending the sensation of the pain but the patient isn't as bothered by it," he said.He's published papers in medical journals on the subject and believes hypnosis can help people with a variety of skin conditions. "People vary in their degree of hypnotizability, but the people who are high hypnotizable have used this as sole anesthesia for major operations or tooth extractions. Not everyone has the capability to suppress pain that much but some people do," said Dr. Shenefelt.Hypnosis has also been used to help cancer patients endure grueling chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Some research shows it can also help with irritable bowel syndrome.

Dr. Philip Shenefelt, a professor at USF College of Medicine’s department of dermatology and a dermatologist at the James A. Haley Veterans’ hospital, sometimes uses an unconventional method to treat ailments ranging from uncontrolled chronic pain to weakened immune systems that make it hard for warts to go away: hypnosis. But the technique is not quite the dangling of a locket in front of someone’s eyes that one may imagine. The brain has four main states of consciousness: alert/awake, trance, dream and deep sleep, Shenefelt said. The trance state — or the state one may experience after reading a book or watching a movie and then realizing they can’t recall what they just saw — can be used to help facilitate hypnosis and treat several medical conditions. “There are misperceptions based on movies about the hypnotist controlling the person being hypnotized,”Shenefelt said. “It’s not a valid thing that happens with hypnosis. The term hypnosis has almost a pejorative scent to it.”As a teenager growing up in Wisconsin in the 1960s, Shenefelt said he “had a curiosity” about meditation and hypnosis, and obtained several self-help books on both topics, but it wasn’t until the 1990s — a little more than two decades after graduating from medical school — that Shenefelt had the opportunity to learn the technique at a workshop held by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis.Usually conducted in an exam room, each hypnosis session lasts approximately 20 minutes.Before entering the trance state, Shenefelt said patients usually hear the following words: “You’ll experience something where you will still be aware. And you will still have control, but your conscious will not—it will be set aside—and your subconscious will be in control. You can come out of trance at any time.”Along the way, Shenefelt will help the person learn self-hypnosis.“There’s an eye roll technique that usually induces hypnosis in about a minute or less,” he said. “It requires some homework on the part of the person. The person needs to be motivated to allow hypnosis to give them their full effect.”Shenefelt said he doesn’t use hypnosis as the first option, and sometimes hypnosis doesn’t work for all patients.“I use conventional treatments first,” he said. “If the conventional treatments don’t do enough then I consider an alternative treatment such as hypnosis. There are some people that get no benefit,” he said. “There are some that get tremendous benefit, and most people are in between.”If hypnotherapy has been deemed the appropriate treatment option, he said, the therapy has to be conducted over the course of multiple sessions. “Typically you don’t rewire the nervous system with one session,” Shenefelt said. “It typically takes 30 to 40 times to change a habit or sensation.Shenefelt’s patients vary in terms of age and ailment. “I see an age range in my clinic of infants to people in their 90s,” he said. As long as the patient has the ability to understand language, they have the ability to be hypnotized, he said. Dr. Eleanor Laser, a psychologist in Chicago, also utilizes hypnosis with her patients. She met Shenefelt at an American Society of Clinical Hypnosis conference a few years ago. Together, they now co-present hypnosis workshops at conventions. While Laser and Shenefelt practice in different fields of medicine, both experience cases that coincide. Twenty years ago, Laser used hypnosis to help a patient break his smoking habit. Last year, she received a call from the same patient. He was experiencing a debilitating, prickly sensation in his feet; it was so bad, he couldn’t work. In an attempt to relieve the pain, he stood for hours in a bathtub filled with cold water and ice. “He went to multiple doctors, here in Chicago,” Laser said. “But no one could help him.”He then met laser and mentally took her back to a recent vacation to the Dominican Republic. His mind took him to a specific restaurant, and he saw the menu.“I asked him to point to the item he ordered on the menu,” she said. “He ate the grouper.”Grouper, she said, swim near a red coral reef that emits toxic poison that the fish absorbs.“You can’t cook it away.”She diagnosed him with ciguatera, a foodborne illness. Laser called Shenefelt to tell him about the case.

CHICOPEE, Mass. (Mass Appeal) - Hypnotherapy can be helpful in many ways and could potentially change your life. Reverend Cynthia Frado, Director of the Hampshire Hypnotherapy Center, shared the benefits of Hypnotherapy.

Benefits of Hypnotherapy1. Hypnotherapy supports positive change. It can help release emotional blockages that prevent us from making the alterations we desire.2. It changes the narrative of self-doubt , guilt and fear to one of self-affirmation, forgiveness and personal strength.3. You use your greatest resource, namely your subconscious mind, to help you bring about healing in your body/mind/ and spirit.4. Most people can be hypnotized. It is simply a very deep form of relaxation and you are always in control. The hypnotist is just a guide.5. The applications for hypnotherapy are many, and it is a powerful complementary resource for people struggling with emotional and physical concerns.6. Every presenting issue is always the symptom and never the cause. That is why the intake session is so important. We look at the layers beneath the issue and address them from the bottom up. That oftentimes means doing an age regression, i. e. let's go back to when these symptoms of paralyzingly fear of choking first began. For some people it is in this lifetime, and for some people they will experience a previous life in their soul's journey.

AN ultramarathon runner whose ambition is to set 165 records by his 65th birthday has spoken of his latest technique - hypnotism.William Sichel, 60, who lives on the island of Sanday, Orkney, has just completed a challenging six-day race in Arizona.He said he listened to hypnosis courses on his MP3 prior to the endurance event, which saw him cross the finish line on Friday after completing more than 470 miles in the difficult Arizona desert climate, in which temperatures change from 20°C to -2°C in hours.Yet, along the way, Mr Sichel was able to set 17 new records, including a world best, taking his current career tally to 94, including 77 long-distance running records.He said: "I've been doing more and more work in self-hypnosis. It helps the brain cope with the overwhelming fatigue and to accept it has to go further than it's gone before. For most of the race I was in a semi-hypnotic state."Across the Years is an annual endurance event in which ­participants aim to complete as many circuits of mile-long course in various time periods, from one day to six.Mr Sichel - one of only six who attempted the full six-day race - finished first in his age group, setting a new world record for men aged 60-65, and fourth overall with 472 miles completed.The winner, Joe Fejes, clocked up 555 miles.Along the way, Mr Sichel also picked up 16 new British and Scottish records and put his success down in part to mental preparation. He now has about four and a half years to collect the remaining 71 records he would like to pick up before his 65th birthday."I think I can do it. I run every race as if it's my last and I push hard to the line. My motivation is self-curiosity, to explore the limits I can push my body and mind to."He recently came second in an eight-day race around Monaco Harbour, covering more than 533 miles and taking one British and eight Scottish records.